Friends with Money
Woah. I thought I knew what a chick-flick was. I was wrong. Give me the light’n’fluffy Reece Witherspoon 100% predictable yes-of-course-they-end-up-together comedies over this pointless drama any day of the week.
Jennifer Aniston does her disenchanted Good Girl role here again, although it is saying something for her natural charm that she is able to convince us that she could actually be a maid when in real life she probably hasn’t cleaned herself for a few decades now. Her character is the outsider in a group of wealthy couples (see the title). One couple, a husband and wife author team (Jason Issacs and Catherine Keener), bicker over their housing re-development, writing, and bad breath. Another couple (Frances McDormand and some effeminate dude) have a smooth marriage, but she is prone to public break-downs over other people’s public displays of rudeness and he just might be gay. It just goes to show that money doesn’t buy happiness….or, wait, does it? The last couple (Joan Cusack and Ned's best friend from Ned & Stacey) seem quite well adjusted. Huh. Okay.
That leaves Aniston’s maid as the only halfway interesting character, a former teacher turned slacker stoner who casually fucks a personal trainer dip-shit at the houses she cleans but ends up falling for some fat unemployed customer of hers, who just seems to be more on her level…until it turns out he is secretly a millionaire. Of course.
The level of man-hate is so high at times ("they’re so self-involved", "they’re so absent and detached emotionally", "they’re so stupid", and "he’s so secretly gay!") that I almost cut off my own testicles a few times during the duration in guilt. To be fair the female characters are all far from perfect, pretty much nuts and total neurotics, but at least they’re characters and not just one-note archetypes like the male roles are. But maybe Friends is just striking back on behalf of all the good actresses put into second-rate 'girlfriend' or 'wife' roles over the years. Who knows.
Why anyone thought there was a film in these characters is beyond me. I can only guess that this is pitched somewhere between the Sex and the City crowd and the Desperate Housewives mob – both shows that as a dude I personally can’t stand more than a minute of, so no big surprise this left me so emotionally detached and bored…tsk! Just like a typical guy I suppose!